interest would mythologize it. >> i will add my thanks to the other two panelists who have spoken and i would say also i am very honored to be included in this panel. i come at this set of issues from a rather different perspective. the work that the organization, aye direct focuses on other things such as the impact of fear of public thinking about terrorism or public thinking about the appropriate responses to terrorism, and on the opportunities available to political and other opinion leaders to communicate about terrorism with the american public in ways that helped to create a climate of public opinion in which it is possible to build public support for constructive farsighted, balanced reasonable approaches to terrorism. ..

amine part of the blame, the frontal cortex which is the site of the ability to retain

abstract concepts and people to think in a farsighted fashion and also very central to our ability to feel empathy for other people some of the kind of things that might lend a public to be able to support farsighted and responsible approach is to terrorism are literally suppressed by the fear of terrorism from notes. terrorism also activates a very basic scheme as that make us think that extreme measures are necessary. we feel we are in an emergency in which it is okay and necessary to give up some of our principals or lights in order to achieve some greater degree of safety. it also gives us the feeling of being in the state of war which has its own implications among them the stereotyping and collectivization of the enemy when you are in a war fi enemy is a group and not individuals so that's another scheme that gets activated, and in addition,

it exploits our tendency to circle the wagons and look to authoritarian leaders for guidance. so there's very profound effects of terrorism on public thinking that have to do with fear, with the activation and since of being at war. so, for us as we look at the president and administration's response to the christmas attack one set of questions has to do with whether when leaders embrace or otherwise acquiesce to fear inducing frameworks within which to understand even slight war is a way to be possible for the same leaders simultaneously to build public support for the farsighted sensible responsible approach to terrorism? and when that follows from that being the motion does acquiescing to the notion of a

war also make it impossible for the public to understand some of those measures like increased security screenings at airports for the seven men believed to visitors from muslim countries is it possible for the public to understand that in other terms than islam which is the notion the president worked hard and appropriately to reject and put outside of the picture so to summarize, the question would be as the president and his administration managed to create a continuity between his earlier stay in principle and some of his earlier public statements like the comco speech and some of the responses that are being developed and taken in the week of the christmas eve and so we see this creation of continuity in the larger picture among all the elements of the president oscar was a strategy as an important challenge before him

at this point. >> jim, i will reiterate and since i feel a little underqualified compared to some of michael panelists i will try to be very brief. i think there's two things i want to highlight. one place of your opening statement, jim, which is the danger is over reaction. there's never been a time in history when there's a shortage of idealistic young men and women willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause and so if each of them can go to more costly security measures we very serious problem and so just to put some perspective on that item the other thing i want to highlight is it is easy to look at the christmas bombing and say there was a failure here. he was allowed to get on the plane. there is also deep success in the following respect. the security systems in terms of intelligence and screening that our government has put in place since 9/11 meant the group

conducting this wound up with a relatively incompetent not that highly skilled or will trade operative. there wasn't the space you could be developed in the way the 9/11 hijackers were and the screening systems in place forced them into using a very cumbersome and ultimately ineffective device. that's what gave the passengers time to disrupt the plot so we can look at this and see this was a terrible failure or we can say compared to what would have been possible fight for ten years ago. we have come quite a long way. >> popular, welcome. i want to point out to you and our audience we have a policy analysis by our colleague, randall o'toole, the deals with why we are sitting in gridlock so much of the time. [laughter] >> i apologize to everyone for arriving late. my colleague has made excellent points. i will make two observations relative to the christmas bombing or attempted bombing very briefly.

one is that no matter how assiduously we try to reform bureaucracy and organizations and no matter how many heads we find your roll, such incidents will have been. and when we look backwards at something like this with all of the blinding light of hindsight and which certain things seem to be inexcusable and other things seem to be crystal clear, there were doubts that should have been put together, we collectively forget that in the real time in which the from the agencies and bureaucracies and officials have to deal with these fragments of inflation if it looks very, very different. we have been through this all before and this latest round of the hindsight filled recriminations to some extent got even silly i would say. references to things like communications interceptors makes the mention of an unnamed

nigerian as something people should have jumped all over. the population of nigeria is 150 million. that doesn't exactly narrowed on the search for terrorists very much, does it? my second observation is despite the reality there is this extremely strong resistance to accept it. we do indulge in hindsight and it's partly driven by the psychological sort of factors that priscilla mentioned it quid for clinton by the politics, and we saw it in spades over these past couple weeks with regard to trying to make political hay out of the latest incident. >> do any of you have comments what others have said? i'm interested in having a conversation among new who's got something to say, please? >> i do. a number of quick things. one, i completely agree with paul fer will have enormous respect we have to acknowledge and keep continuing to underscore that our government can do everything right and we

can still have a terrorist attack. the odds are always against us. the odds are always in the terrorist favor. there is no question about that. that said, it seems to me that does not and shouldn't be used to prevent failures. one of the additional things to me that seems is commendable about the president's response to this which it doesn't say in the beginning is unlike the typical government response or maybe i did say it but it is worth underscoring hear the president in contrast to the initial statement on secretary napolitano's part which she said was misconstrued and i take her at her word wishes of the system works the president's consistent saying the system failed and was a catastrophic failure particularly catastrophic failure and there were doubts the could have been connected and should have been connected that were not just clear in hindsight but were clear at the time just a couple of quick examples of that and to mention one in particular paul mentioned, the nsa intercepts that a nigerian was being prepared for attacks in the

united states on the homeland. my understanding is the least one of those intersects i think there were several specifically mentioned umar farouk abdulmutallab, the first two names. if you put it together with the fact this suspect's own father and not just anyone off the street as it has been stated by some in the intelligence community but a respected nigerian banker went physically to the embassy and talked to not one agency but to, the department and central intelligence agency and wasn't in missing person report. he said he was conservative his son, he's in yemen, and the nsa intercepted background. follow those meetings with written communications and telephone calls. we know that yemen is a hotbed of terrorism. apparently intelligence community didn't receive a possibility al qaeda and the arab peninsula might attack the homeland which is the story is another failure of imagination and it seems al qaeda is fixation on aviation system all of it seems to me not just in

retrospect but before the effect of to have been enough to put on high alert and there certainly is the president's view as he has said repeatedly. another thing i would say is john brennan was famous the, the white house countered terse adviser, has acknowledged that he was briefed by the saudi tourism official himself was nearly assassinated by an assassin who used petn, one of the things used this device, on the body and this wasn't shared he said with the faa or tsa because this was an assassination attempt in a building. it seems to me that we have all of the failure of pagination the predated the 9/11 point. suggest again, to sum this up. this was a printable phil ury and if we don't take it to be preventable failure and learn from it seems to me we will have a failure in the future that is potentially catastrophic but is catastrophic in fact. >> i think it's a close call.

but is a 20/20 hindsight. paul pillar, german? >> i agree the problem i think is that was in the promise made. the promise that was made after line 11 is you give up these rights to electronic records to the patriot act, your right of privacy over those records and we will protect you through the fisa amendments, foreign intelligence surveillance act amendments. you give up privacy rights to door international communications and that is the way that we will protect you. you give us billions of dollars, give unfettered authority atingua the burden of oversight and that we will protect you and now we find there was a wasted effort. surprise, surprise giving up our privacy doesn't help the government actually find real terrorists it just creates a lot of information the government has to then filtered through in which the very important pieces

of information get lost. >> the issue is not whether we are going to pin a label "villere" again in hindsight and hindsight is the only thing we have got looking backward on that particular incident and i don't differ with the details clark mentioned at all. the issue is our failures, even if we say yes it is a failure, are they going to happen anyway despite all of the reforms and everything else? and i agree 100% with mike. we heard all this before. we had this huge fix five years ago with the creation of a couple of new bureaucracies, the office of the director of national intelligence, national counterterrorism center and that this was supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening. so it's basically the same thing with a somewhat different list of bureaucratic players and that strongly suggests to me that the answer to the question of are we going to have failures even if we don't want to pin a label of failure on what happened a couple of weeks ago are we going

to have such failures despite the efforts of reform and the answer to that is yes. >> priscilla. >> i just wanted to make me be a sobering observation that while i agree with the assessments that i am hearing here i feel that the narrative that the public will take away from this is not that we gave up so much, and it turns out it was a waste, but that recently things were allowed to get blacks -- laxed and what has happened in the administration is there has been a revelation and a wake-up call, and that is another set of reasons why i said in my earlier remarks that we think, my colleagues and i think it is critically important for the president to be able to draw a

through line from his earlier statements of principle and from the kind of comments that he made in the cairo speech through to the current policy decisions if that is possible otherwise the narrative that is going to be reinforced is unfortunately at least there's a good probability the narrative will be one of the kind of revelation and we could call. islamic let me raise a question that we didn't really touched on here at the early going, and that is the question of a status of al qaeda if you will and "the new york times," scott shane, he does a news analysis where he says the term al qaeda used as a catchall in many of the plots were as important distinctions by most accounts the case none of the to those nine cases appears to be directly tied to al qaeda central. the pakistan based group led by bin laden to the extent we have comments may be jake shapiro, what we learn from al qaeda and what is the current thinking on al qaeda? >> i mean, my sense is that

there are two things going on. there is a coherent organization that is the inheritor of the organization -- [inaudible] -- that conducted the mine 11 attack and there's still operating although how much ability they have to do more than kind of encouraged people was not clear. but then you have groups kind of in many areas adopting the name because it now has a certain cachet within the kind of islamist extremist community so it is useful for fund-raising purposes and getting recruits but it's also useful for government's right? if you label the group and the defense in your country as al qaeda related, the united states government kind of is strongly incentivize to come to your side with aid and intelligence assistance and about to become things like that so there's

factors that plan to kind of magnify the sense that there's one coherent organization out there and there is not. one of the interesting streams of reporting that's come out of that, the attacker who killed the agents and afghanistan recently is that we have been more related to one of taliban and i obviously, the details but there's a great deal of complexity that is just incredibly hard to communicate anywhere outside of kind of specialists circles. >> i would add to that by citing the following. it seems to me that we now have the worst of all possible worlds. after 9/11 commendably the government put al qaeda central, bin laden, al-zawahiri, the people who conceived of and carried out the 9/11 attack on the run. but ever focus on iraq for a

number of years, there's no question, but that took us -- took our eye off the ball and allowed al qaeda central to regroup, and so we all know now that somewhere along the afghan-pakistan border they're still in business, we haven't found them and they still provide at least in its promotional support terrorists around the world, and everything that i've read, both unclassified and classified, suggests that they have the game, and delete the ligon of opposing and operational threat to the united states. in addition to that, we now see an increasingly franchisees operating room of world without qaeda and the arabian peninsula being elitist and most lethal, north africa come al qaeda in the mog -- and there's been experiences in the donner and that is why africom was struck by the duty to focus on the

potential terrorism threat from sub-saharan africa. in addition to that, we have obviously these homegrown plots. i don't -- i don't think we should necessarily infer from the fact that there seems to have been an increasing number of them this past year since september 11th that necessarily homegrown terrorism is a rising threat that may well be that the number happens to be a coincidence. but the point is it is a threat and i've never believed the conventional wisdom that we in the united states have less of a potential home grown threat in the muslim community that is the case in europe because our muslim communities better integrated, better educated. that is certainly true but one of the things to to go from bin laden and al-zawahiri and from abdulmutallab is terrorists come in all sizes and stripes and socio-economic circumstances and it's not necessarily the case if one is economically affluent and educated that that person is it

lead to terrorism. as we have a metastasizing problem of terrorism and one about which we should be increasingly concerned it seems to me. >> i just want to take exception with one thing, which is the term metastasizing carries with it the connotation of a threat that is something that can kill you. a human being we think about metastasizing the stage before you die. this isn't a threat that can seriously damage or were society. acid hour over reaction to it. so i would agree spring, perhaps although the quantitative evidence is unclear and certainly kind of overall the terrorism hasn't gone up substantially once you drop by iraq and afghanistan from the analysis which is a very different thing because the reason which we cannot terrorists attack but once you drop out there is no quantitative evidence that is

terrorism increasing and the amount of damage that these types of the bense are doing is what kind of going up dramatically in a meaningful way. and so, spreading yes metastasizing carries the connotation as it might describe as jim said it plays into the hands of the political goal. islamic can i respond quickly and i promise i will be quick. with respect to jake it seems that thinking is very dangerous. that is a pre-9/11 line declines in the post 9/11 world and i am surprised there is anybody that can make the argument with a straight face in light of the christmas day incident. metastasizing is the right word to use precisely because metastasizing suggests it can kill. terrorists are at work outside this country and inside this country today to exceed the number of people killed on a 9/11. their ultimate goal was the acquisition of a weapon of mass destruction which would be a

game changer for this country which would pose an existential threat to this country and if we don't recognize that, it seems to me we are leaving ourselves open for the ultimate catastrophe. >> i will just defend jake on this. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> as he said in his original words, you know, they're has never been a shortage of misguided idealized world changers out there who for whatever their purpose is have used violence as a methodology for moving their vision and the world forward whether that's coming you know -- and that is never going to go away. you know, in fact there have been weapons of mass destruction found right here in the united states. there was all the components to a dirty bomb together with instructions to put that together maine and a chemical weapon was found in texas.

the one in maine was found last year. anybody know about it? and this is a pretty learn an audience. the one in texas was found in 2003 and think. 2004. why wouldn't you have heard about these? will, because it was a white supremacist and maine and a right-wing anti-government militia person in texas. so, you know, we can't talk -- we have to have an adult conversation about what this threat is. and the only place i disagree with jacob is the idea that because terrorism is a complex problem and al qaeda is a complex and concept and entity that only experts can get down to the bottom of it. i think i have a lot of confidence in the american public when they are getting reliable information, you know, and i think the completion of what the threat is is a huge part of the problem of our reaction. and unless we can start to have that conversation where we don't

call al qaeda and iraq the same thing as, you know, bin laden's's al qaeda and evin bin ladens's al qaeda the same thing. post a 9/11 the same as it was pretty 9/11 much less every other group out there who is like a rolex that you buy on the corner and not very much like a rolex. and we do -- and part of where i will criticize john brennan's remarks in the press conference -- he was given the opportunity to present that. you know one of the reporters asked what is the why here? why would this 23-year-old man be willing to sacrifice himself? y? and his response was al qaeda is an organization dedicated to murder and want and slaughter of innocent. i'm not sure that is a response. al qaeda has the destruction and the debt and are determined to carry out attacks in the homeland. i don't think that is helpful.

because one of the things the government should realize about the christmas attack, this kid was what, 14-years-old on 9/11 raised in wealth and a country that wasn't really part of the conflict that created al qaeda. why in the world -- we should be concerned about why this 23 year old kid over the last eight years has decided he personally is an enemy of the united states of america and we should have an adult conversation about how terrorism actually works because terrorism is a methodology. i have a book about this that i talk about the methodology, and part of their methodology is to exactly what they are doing. and requires us reacting exactly the way we are reacting to it and if we simply read their methodology it will give a road map to not only will we should do but what we shouldn't do and a lot of what we are doing now is what we shouldn't do. >> i told our panel we would be doing a good job if i had to break up fistfights during the conversation. we started to see early flashes

of that some things are going well. as we continue i wanted to draw attention back to the obama administration and may be broadened. we've been talking for early probably already but abroad at. obviously the christmas attempt was in the late r reza event of the past year to really get the arrest of david headley, the fort who'd shooting and the events of iraq, afghanistan, guantanamo and i sure i've missed a few things. but let's continue, again, focusing on the actions of the administration in response to all of the year's defense. paul, did you -- >> maybe i will kind of segue into that what i was going to say in response to the most recent couple of comments to read the labels, metaphors whether it is metastasis, war on terror, they do more harm than good with regard to understanding the phenomenon we are dealing with. al qaeda, the name, does more harm than good in making us understand that because there's a tendency to think of one unified organization that's not

the case the scott shane piece in the times is a very good corrective to that. on the domestic incidents that have occurred, and i agree with clarke and violating this, and this gets directly to your mention of this, jim, what we are seeing are individuals basically self-taught radicalized individuals who are the ones taking the initiative to seek groups to seek out training, to seek help the was true in the northern virginia five. that puts the lie in my view in the concept the main thing we are worrying about here is a group that is the center of investigation and action that is putting its tentacles out and drawling these people in be they domestic factors here in the united states or those overseas.

the threat and even putting it in the singular threat is misleading but i will do it any way. it is very maltese i did. it isn't just one group. the experts get bogged down in to these debates about just what is the status of al qaeda central. and it's somewhat of a diversion because even if you agree is, there's still an organization there come a significant threat it is only part of the threat and the manifestations we have seen, all of these incidents that you've been enumerated, jim, are basically not part of that. they are individuals seeking out other groups, including individuals here in the united states. >> putting you on the spot, priscilla, labels, and communications about how does this affect public perception and public policy. >> certainly as i handed earlier, the label, war, is an incredibly powerful one.

not just because it is a label but because it describes a state of mind and way of thinking, right? the sheep the way people think. not only about themselves but about a work kind of collective response to challenges like this. but i was thinking as i listened to this exchange that it's not absolutely unheard of to have to figure out how to talk about a very serious threat without penalizing, and in my focuses on how you speak to the american public. so it isn't unheard of to have to talk about something that is very frightening in a way that doesn't penalize people and it enables them to understand why extreme overreactions might be problematic so i was trying to think how to apply some of what one might have learned from the situations to this because i agree solution cannot be to avoid stating the truth if there

are indeed truth that can be agreed upon and i think that there may be two ways of thinking about this. one of them is the importance of being able to point to a potentially positive outcome. so even as we talk about the seriousness of this threat, kanaby conjurer for the public the possibility of an improvement? obviously not a perfect state of perfect safety but a potentially positive outcome. and the second observation in this context is the importance of being able to evoke a bigger picture. one way to get at this is to dig down deeper in other words you break up the problem, right? you pick up the category. it's not terrorism and some huge monolithic cents. it's particular groups and even a particular individuals. that's very important. but the other possibilities to kind of a word. one of the messages and framing

a purchase that we have commissioned -- we've commissioned some qualitative and exploratory testing into narratives that might promote public thinking, constructive public thinking about terrorism and a state of fear and we've done this in a variety of different contexts and of different projects. but one of the kind of promising narrative's had to do with helping people understand that while there is a small and very dangerous group of organizations and individuals who do indeed mean serious harm, the vast majority of people around the world leader hate us or less. they are waiting to see how we behave before they make their decisions. and the notion of how important is not to lose that undecided vote turns out to be a very

persuasive and engaging way for people to think differently about this problem. and one of the things that it does is it puts a larger circle around the problem of terrorism because you are not just focusing on the group of fanatics which could easily be read to be the entire rest of certainly the muslim world perhaps or the sort of others out there are all fanatics but in fact makes the others out there in much bigger circle of people who are reasonable, understandable, natural, so that may not prove to be the most effective message but it gets at what i'm trying to point to by the grave importance of the need to evoke a bigger picture, to put that very serious, very dire threat in a context that enables people to see it as not the only way of understanding or describing the world out there. >> let me bring it back to the

war and the administration because i think a was clear in the early part of this year the administration was going to issue the war notion. here in the wake of the christmas attempt several times i think i've seen the administration assure the public does believe we are in a state of war. others, do you see the same thing? have you seen the same thing happening and what do you think of it? >> you are quite right in his last statement, last thursday president obama went out of his way to say that we are at war partly because of course he's been under political attack from republicans, conservatives, and former vice president cheney's words pretending we are not at war said the administration is beginning to emphasize this. what i would say generally, and expect to the initial question about how the administration is done on counterterrorism this past year i think the bush

administration overemphasized the war aspect of counterterrorism, and i think the obama administration until now has under emphasized it. i think the proper strategy is to recognize there are a number of elements to a successful counterterrorism strategy. we do have to kill and captured terrorists. there is a war aspect to it. the obama administration the degree they carry that is under state. but generally people don't realize president obama has intensified the effort to go after al qaeda central and afghanistan and pakistan. the strikes are intensified under the tenure. famously after much deliberation he's increasing the number of troops had placed on afghanistan and the lamborn objectives for doing so he says is to prevent afghanistan from again becoming a base for terrorism against the denied its seats. there's also a law enforcement aspect and commendably seems the obama administration has

continued the bush administration's strategy of moving law enforcement agencies in general and fpi in particular away from its primary focus making cases that can stand up in court at the expense of waiting plods even if at the end of the day he can't make a very effective criminal case. i think that the isasi case, the dallas case in springfield, illinois case were examples of this. where the bush administration didn't focus is where i said the obama administration focused commendably and that is, and this is what priscilla is largely talking about it seems to me is the struggle for the hearts and minds of the muslim community here in the united states and around the world. the trying to answer this question that might raised that i agree brennan didn't answer well, we have to figure out why it is that young people for some reason are providing the name of islam and using it as an extent to carry out terrorism.

the cairo speech priscilla mentioned was a commendable effort to talk in a new way to the muslim world and disabuse some of this notion that because the vast majority of americans are not muslim and do not adhere to the form of islam that the terrorists want us to that we are necessarily enemies of islam so the point is it is a multifaceted strategy. there are elements of each and we do ourselves peril if we overemphasize any one of those aspects and underemphasize any one of those aspects. >> paul pillar, you for the author in a chapter of our but here at cadel that deals with war, use of military and war theme. what do you have to add? >> war is another one of those words or concepts that does more to confuse, blur and complete and explain. i absolutely agree with clark in terms of the name and driving mechanism. it is a matter of responding to

political criticism. that is obviously the president said last week. but what meter the obama administration or its critics have been specific about, and i would like either or both of them to be specific is okay we are going to call something a war or not call it a war, what exactly does that mean? are we referring to the use of the military force which is a subject with chris and i wrote about, are we referring to how we should handle detainee's? there's another issue where a lot of the dialogue seems to be put in this concept is it war or not? should we treat people in civilian court rather than the military commissions? those and other issues are ones that ought to be debated specifically on their merits. there are pros and cons to be discussed about what sort of judicial procedure should be used with captured terrorists. and simply bating the label back and forth are we at war or knott at war doesn't clarify those

issues at all. clark also correctly points out the change in emphasis with regard to the use of military force and the fact of the theater with regard to the drums. let's be blunt about this, too bad. this is partly a political reaction. this is under the president who is opposed to the iraq war from the very beginning and as a democrat fairly or unfairly has to be concerned about not being vulnerable to the charge of being a wimp on national-security matters generally or counterterrorism in general, so part of what we are seeing in the theater is a response to that as well. i hasten to add that does not mean, and here i also agree with bart, that does not mean this particular military instrument does not have a utility as one of the large number of instance -- instruments that my colleagues have mentioned are some of the others that must also be used. so, yes, there is a discussion

to be had about the role of military force, military force does have a role but simply bedding labels like war, wore on her back-and-forth does nothing to clarify the issue. >> i would like to kind of actually taken paul's very good advice and try and lay out to kinds of the war metaphor and then suggest maybe that someone else might be able to speak to the pros but it seems to me that the war metaphor for what we are engaged in here at its terrorist goals in two very important ways. the first is that plays into the narrative they are trying to construct with population they are appealing to of this ragged band of great individuals fighting the mighty power that is oppressing their society. so it plays into that metaphor. and it also helps their efforts in some sense to create fear and anxiety in our population as a way of kind of pushing us in to

political changes because it magnifies the sense of the threat and the danger they represent. and so it seems to me it has a very decouple clear cons. i'm not clear what the and vintages are calling this a war. >> getting to the communication strategy this was another thing during a press conference where the part of homeland security secretary napolitano was asking these rhetorical questions. we also need to look at the whole issue of what is counter radicalization. how do we communicate better american values and so forth in this country and also around the globe? if the american value that we want to communicate about the world is that if we don't like you would ever country you are and we are going to send a predator drone and a blow up you and your family, then we should probably be expecting some hostility as a result of that policy and it's ironic secretary napolitano is saying this as she is implementing the tsa program

it discriminates against people who from the 14 nations by the way 13 of which are predominantly muslim nations and saying that we don't care if you're the most reliable trustworthy person in the world because you come from that nation you are going to get extra screening and basically put forth the discriminatory policy and then wonder why they are not accepting that american values are our tolerance and acceptance of all different ideas. so as a communications strategy of the we are missing the boat. in addition to this idea of war what is it we are actually accomplishing and if we are creating more terrorist than we are killing it isn't an effective way of approaching the problem. >> a lot of what i'm hearing from many of you i think might boil down to provocative weakness. al qaeda has a plan. it's back to their success against the soviet union and

afghanistan. while we sit around arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pan they are trying to break the united states. why is when you are saying you especially why is that not provocative weakness? people are not the world are joining these groups because they see as being weak, see us thinking twice about things. shouldn't we be focusing perhaps more on stomping this problem out? >> i think if you want to stomp out a problem that amounts to small groups of young men and women doing things for a strict causes there is always been to be folks willing to latch on to this abstract cause for a live range of reasons and do crazy things and if we set for ourselves the standard that we

need to kind of stamp all of that out that's just not going to happen. >> i think it also the statement misunderstands what the terrorist methodology is. they are not looking for a military victory. they don't expect a military victory. what they are trying to do is delegitimize the government attack to say that whatever you say your values are that's actually a hypocritical statement and i can prove that by provoking you into making -- taking actions that violate the values you say you appreciate that violate the rule of law because one sallai -- it's very hard as a terrorist to convince people fall doesn't matter. i have to convince my followers you can become in justice and throw away the rest of your life because bald doesn't matter. until i can prove it and here's how i prove it. i go out and commit a terrorist act and all of a sudden left government violates the

restrictions on its activities and therefore creates a new law. if the government can create a new law we can create an law and that becomes a very powerful message for developing new generation of terrorists, and i am afraid that is what is happening now. whereas this new generation we are still addressing a problem that existed before 9/11 rather than looking at this is a comprehensive methodology that is trying to go into actions counterproductive. >> a quick reaction to that if i could. it seems to me jake in my judgment overgeneralizes the issue and sets up a -- lens is the goal is to prevent small numbers of young man or woman from pursuing the causes. of course they can to prevent that but that isn't what we are trying to do. we are talking about a small number thankfully of men and women who have the goal of carrying out a catastrophic attack against the united states. that is the goal and it seems to

me our objective given that goal should be agreeing with paul we can't prevent every terrorist incident. we should do what we can to prevent those that are preventable and reduce the chance of a catastrophic attack so that's why i think we need to redouble efforts on preventing tourists from getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction. the other thing i would say is that i want to emphasize i am not a jack booted thug when it comes to this issue. [laughter] as i said before, let me underscore there is a war aspect to this and a law enforcement it seems to me in the bush administration and commendably as i said the obama administration is focusing on the hearts and minds struggle we are engaged in and we certainly can because we cannot kill and capture every terrorist as rumsfeld all people family acknowledged in a minow we have to get smarter about how it is that we can counter the narrative, and we certainly can engage in security measures that

perversely serve to create more terrorists and so it seems to me we have got to come up with a balance, just close by saying george kennan, the terrific cold war strategist was so right at the end of the famous cable saying the only way that ultimately the united states in general and the united states particularly in the west can be defeated would be to pursue the communists in a way that is contrary to our own values to become like them. the same is true for us here. i think it is possible for us to balance security and liberty. so quickly, i have in my own mind a calculus i go through whenever i try to evaluate a given security measure. and my calculus is does the game and security of rated ammunition and liberty? i will give two examples. opposite extremes. thanks to richard reid we take off our shoes at airports and none of us like to do it but to me that's a small price to pay in terms of inconvenience if it prevents the next shoe bomber in the absence of any good technology right now that prevents us from having to do

that. at the opposite extreme and this goes back to something like he alluded to earlier that was the u.s. i think story a couple of years ago the nsa was trying to get a record not just of telephone calls but between someone abroad and someone here in the united states one of whom were both of whom might be connected to turner was on which of course we want the government to do that further nsa was trying to get a record of every call in the united states and that is obviously counterproductive. that puts more hay on the stack when what we need as you said is to have less hay on the stack to find the needle within. we need to strike the right balance it seems to me and we can do that but we can't have perfect security were. >> that is the point clark just made and i will expand on a couple of respects. it's how much security as you phrase it, clark, how was it, how much is our security in proved at the price of and what he elaborated on the price of

personal liberties we can expand that way of thinking about any counter terrorist measure and say how much security to we want at the price of it might be privacy, it might be personal liberty and might be the convenience of the travelling public might be monitoring cost, it often is monitoring cost. it might be costs and blood and treasure for military operations overseas as in afghanistan. >> the question that ought to be asked in each one of these endeavors if it is being conducted in the name of counterterrorism is how much additional security are we buying at the price of all of those things, not just personal liberty. the other point i want to make as an expansion would clark said this puts into perspective a lot of the things we are hashed over last week with regard to the failures of the intelligence security services and names going on watch lists and all that. this is not simply a tradecraft or administrative matter for

intelligence or security agencies. it is a policy issue. it is a policy issue in terms of what criteria we want to use to move some of those half million names from the database to the database is that really make a difference with regard to people getting secondary screening or being denied a seat on an airplane altogether because that gets -- that is just another subset of the larger question of how much security do we want to lie at the price of in this case someone's ability to fly or to fly without getting hassled. one of the most encouraging things i heard or read in the president's directive last week was the part about i can't remember the exact language but it was basically clarifying the criteria for moving names from one list to another. good thing for the president to focus on because that isn't just something that in ctc can do or the dni. that is a policy issue to

reflect the policy makers since how much security the american people to buy it the price of something else. >> as we continue i want to start to focus on the future. what should the obama administration be doing for the rest of the term and however for president, service goes. priscilla? >> i want to jump in here and just again kind of in a cautionary way suggest that there are not a very many prices the public will not pay unfortunately for safety. and again i am not in any way disagreeing with the content of the arguments that i'm hearing. i am just reflecting on the research that we have looked at in terms of how to talk about these. >> i have been intrigued by the

in my sense there's resistance to the whole body scanners which are obvious in one sense obviously an improvement in security though marginal -- >> there is no public resistance to read the public is 80%, 85% in favor of the full body scan. >> i'm hearing from a -- >> it's a matter of changing move thank on the business what names should want a no-fly list -- there were complaints before the last couple of years. >> if the last scary incident happened three weeks ago we are all in favor of putting all kind of names on the list. if it's been a few years gone by since the big scary incident and we are going to start grumbling at how many names are on the list. >> also i think it's about the information the public gets. every salesman from everybody's scanner company has been on the news the last two weeks saying this is the answer where a british study last year said it is not and said it would not

identify these specific things, powder, liquid, so if the public got the information the body scanner machine would not be any edition in security and show you naked do you still want it. [laughter] >> that's what i was quite say too. >> it's getting the right information. >> having the date to the committee on effectiveness as a more powerful foundation and another foundation for the debate is the nature in which these measures are counterproductive and that is where i think you are getting both clark and paul are getting the notion of what do you lose taking some of these measures and i guess i would emphasize the importance of spelling that out because as long as it is left as a trade-off between something in safety, rights and safety, liberties and saved, privacy and safety, the majority

will conclude it's preposterous to ask someone to put those other things before safety so if you're going to make that argument and i believe there is the argument to be made it's important to connect the dots and help people understand how we days the costs of some of these measures do not outweigh the benefits. so i would make the argument, please for connecting the dots and not just asserting that. spec with me asked a question has yet arisen or an issue. i think hasn't been written to the garrison and that is the communications. clark talked about countering the narrative and the narrative now is carried worldwide on the internet through videos. this event will be watched are around the world by people interested. we have a different problem than we did ten years ago or 15 years ago in speaking to the world how

to the address that way that everything we say literally here but especially the administration and political leaders everything is perceived around the world, what is the right thing to do? how should we change our behavior in light of the fact we are speaking of just in domestic audiences the international audiences are interested not only at heart? >> can i defer to my colleagues to answer that and then at something and not necessarily now but direction as some point try to answer the other question depots and that is what should the administration be doing when forward and i would also like to -- >> maybe we will go down the line and get two minutes each of you on what the administration should be doing. so the to the communications question and then prescriptions. >> i think i will just add one piece of evidence here to kind of start the discussions. i recently did a very large national survey in pakistan with christine fare from georgetown and kneal from the stanford business school, and one of the

things we did is studied support for four specific organizations. al qaeda, the militant and the secretary militia and the afghan town of npv and one of the interesting things we found is that once you kind of take account of people speechless of senior economic circumstances and the level of education, what they think about the u.s. impact on the world has zero impact on the support for any of those organizations. and, you know, for al qaeda this is a little bit odd because they articulate they are doing something to deal with the u.s. but for the other organizations this makes perfect sense because all of them are -- when they go to the public in pakistan, they are articulate ingalls adel specific things very local, so what we are doing on the world stage is really not sensibly important. and so, it is very easy for us to think that how we are received and what people think about our actions on the world stage will have a massive impact on the terrorism and propensity people to do stuff. there's not a lot of evidence

for that. >> on the communication question i think the main thing we need to bear in mind in response to the realities that you summarize is be careful and be aware of how much is getting out there. that is outside the control of other government leaders, so we have reactions to things that say american televangelists may say which in some instances have had tremendous negative residence in the world and that of our leaders it's all the fault of the bishop and attrition, the obama administration. there are some things to get within government where you can be a little more careful. when the general was speaking in a form saying my god is better than your god, that does not help. and a little more discipline when it comes to those sorts of things are appropriate. i believe as far as what the

government leaders themselves to do is president obama's kiira speech and my personal view was an outstanding speech that got right to rest of the messages that need to be heard for the leader of the free world and the united states and that part of what he has been trying to do expect one of clark's comments the i think it's been very good and appropriate. >> let's turn to prescriptions. i have read my about twice now once per year with every gentry 30 diaspora counterterrorism strategy from the administration clearly michael in the administration is and what it should be but let's go down the line and what should the obama ad bense risch indy 500 to set the stage for better in the future? >> that is a terrific question and has allowed the answer and i will try to be brief, two or three quick points. i want to agree with paul on another point and that is he's quite right part of the problems

being a democracy. it's much easier in a dictatorship. but we are with sold by public opinion and terrorism seems to be real and imminent because there was a recent attack last week or a couple of weeks ago that we go to one extreme and if the years pass to get books like overblown or terms like overreaction and we have to use this term we've used again and again having adult conversation about terrorism. we have to be adults and recognize that even when it's not an issue staring us in the face in the headlines it is still a concern of the average american and a top priority concern for the government. i also want to defend these poll body imaging machines we've talked about a couple of times and you have raised them in number of times. they are not perfect and there are certain things they cannot detect flexible if an explosive had been hidden in a body cavity it could not detect that but it is the closest that there is now to a so verbal wit.

the tendency for clothing spot concealed guns and knives hidden on passenger clothing on their bodies. they can't detect what is hidden is an explosive but they can detect there is some anomaly on the body or attached to the body would have in this instance noted there was something called on mr. abdulmutallab's% think noticing that anomaly there would have been a further physical the inspection in which case it would have been discovered they had an explosive side we need to couple the deployment of this technology with more sophisticated explosive detection technology because we can certainly talk about in detail but i think it is a step in the right direction. and that is in part why you've got this in addition to the history of course why you have this huge public support that we've seen in the polls. to answer quickly your question was should the obama administration two guinn four were? let me focus my comments on the durham of homeland security. part of what needs to happen is we need to the homeland security back in the department of homeland security. what do i mean by that?

part of the reason why the dhs is still getting its sea legs seven years after creation is so much of what the department of homeland security does doesn't have anything to do with homeland security, counterterrorism. secretary napolitano spent a lot of her time last year, it is no criticism of hers, it is a presidential directive, that predated her and the local administration continue -- so much of her time in the early months of last year were consumed with h1n! virus, that should have been handled by dhs, there is no excess of terrorism there. the administration says and i find it is hard to believe politically, not -- they will to get immigration reform at some point this year. the respect of whether they should or shouldn't. if they do, i would argue that the department of homeland security should not be the point agency for that and it's been announced dhs and the secretary would be the point people for that. of course there is more of a security connection to immigration than is the case for the swine flu. the department of homeland

security processes immigration benefits and enforces immigration law so they will have to be involved and consulted with the security component of immigration is very small. it is largely overwhelmingly an economic issue, social and cultural issue. the point is dhs was conceived in the wake of the terror attack to prevent the next terror attack and counterterrorism ought to be its focus. ..

the reason for doing it was the bush administration's tendency, wrongly, to think that the homeland security and national security essentially have nothing to do with each other and they must be, if the obama administration is recognized, part and parcel to the same thing. that said, it seems to me unless there is a parallel structure competing with the nsc for the president's attention that the borrowing a christmas day incident the president is not going to hear as much about her latest folder abilities in aviation or limit time as he is about the latest machinations in iran or north korea. and the president, i don't know that he explicitly said this, but he certainly implied that he is going to be much more focused on aviation security and other kind of homeland security issues going forward again was the case before hand. and if there's a new organizational change that needs to happen and i would just close by saying that before you got here, paul, i was agreeing with you that the last thing we need is another organizational

change. after 9/11 and obviously failed. i think the administration ought to rethink the subsuming of agencies. >> excuse me. clark and i disagree on far more than just the body scanners. but i like to focus on what we do agree on. first off, back tremendous respect for the work that she did as department of homeland security inspector general and i think that's the one aspect that is completely missing from all of our counterterrorism efforts as there is no accountability. and, you know, that is the big problem and everything, you know, and that is what is causing this failure in communication is that the american public doesn't have the facts on the table. so it is impossible for them to engage in any meaningful debate about these policies and all these important issues. and i think that is something that this administration needs to address immediately and are

already a year behind. a top to bottom review of every intelligence agency, every intelligence authority, every intelligence practice and procedure to gauge its effectiveness, two to gauge whether it's being used, to gauge whether system completely misuse of resources. because if we don't understand that we can't communicate that, then all these other debates about what works and what doesn't are kind of meaningless if there without facts. in the second day we need to do is make sure that our policies and procedures actually do express american values. tolerance, transparency, you know, respect for the rule of law and due process. those things ultimately will keep us stronger and protect us better than any sort of effort to stomp out who we perceive as the bad guys. and, you know, this christmas incident gives us that opportunity to say hey wait a

minute, we received a lot of promises from the intelligence community, but what is actually happening? what are the actual breakdowns and let's do a review of this. there's actually a bill in the house that was proposed by representatives barbara lee that would create a congressional body. they could do exactly this type of review and i think that's what's really necessary so we can have the facts on the table and engage in the conversations about the areas that we actually disagree once we're all working from the same facts, rather than arguing from our sins -- or different set of facts. >> priscilla lewis? >> i will take as a given that we need at the level of government a strategy. so my points will go to but we need by way of a communication to and with the american public

about our counterterrorism strategy. and i would start by saying that i think a lesson from the last year is that don't overreact while true is not enough. it is about not doing things rather than what we do need to do, think tom and feel about this challenge. so that is the big challenge, to develop a positive agenda that represents a real alternative to the war on terror with all of its potential for abuse and overreaction. and it needs to be a communication and narrative to be shared with the american public that is as compelling as easy to think a war on terrorism, if at all possible. i know that's a very, very hard parts to imagine from a communication standpoint. it needs to be a narrative that includes all of the profoundly important assertions that were

made in the cairo's speech, all of the principles that mike refers to, but that also tells us how a different approach will keep us safe. and has been keeping us safe. if it needs to calm fears, in a stupor most clear thinking, needs to enable people to take in fact speakers as long as the kind of framework for thinking that the war on terrorism. there are facts that simply will not be heard or will be rejected because they don't fit the frame. and it needs to be a narrative that is in the hands of everyone who is capable of influencing public thinking at a significant level before the next crisis happens. faith leaders, educators, community leaders, members of congress. the fact that there could've been any sense of not being prepared for what to say after something like the christmas attempt and after evidence

emerged of potentially dangerous homeland source is or domestic sources of terrorism. the back of the unanticipated or cared for in some way is unimaginable. those things were so unimaginable. do need to prepare for the thing for a communication standpoint is critical and clear to me. and i would just add two more points. one of them being that i think at this point as opposed to a year or two ago, there really is a challenge of trying to present a narrative that includes and takes account of what's been called the homegrown terrorism threats. how real that is, whether it's growing or diminishing time it is out there and it is beginning to shape public thinking. so this new narrative has to take account of that. i would just -- and they don't have a recommendation here. i would simply observe that

ironically the very narrative that helps to promote constructive thinking about how to address international terrorism, the narrative of counter recto station, which leads to real to think bigger and longer term here that very narrative may have some potential to backfire when it comes to thinking about the domestic terrorism threat. it has its good promote increased public fearfulness about the potential for violence by muslim and arab-american communities. if the thought becomes widespread, that any unhappy or disgruntled or alienated young american muslim or arab is potentially a violent extremist. if it is not a causation over there is different from article as they should hear, potentially. and then the last point as i look back. we are talking about a communication strategy or a counterterrorism strategy.

those are very top-down things. i wonder whether there is an opportunity in the coming year for the administration to engage the public in thinking about how it is that we wouik to respond to the terrorist threat and to the next crisis. the obama campaign broke such new ground in terms of engaging people creatively and actively in this process. what are the opportunities to reach out to the incredibly diverse american public and draw on the strengths and insights of citizens to try to solve this problem. and in so, doing to unify in some ways our society and build resilience as we confront this threat. so i seem opportunities and for more challenges for the administration. each of you take two minutes as defined in scientific terms. so i really do want to get to

the questions. >> the obama administration is continued aggression against kind of in terms of counterterrorism is great. there was a strike in mind the white house report, which is that there was a failure i'm quoting, he signed responsibility and accountability for the follow-up of high threat teams. that is an appalling managerial theory. it was properly failed to. that poison needs to be held to account. >> last thing we need is more commissions of inquiry, which have their own motive to justify their own existence by uncovering problems and proposing fixes even if their problems and fixes that have been uncovered and proposed many times before. and i think just looking at the president direct dave last week, you get some idea of how this is a struggle, in this case by the administration, to come up with any new ideas.

those weren't ideas. there were expectations to sort of do what we've been doing all the time. we're just going to try and do it well. improve analysis, make sure somebody is responsible for following up leads. not exactly fresh thinking. we can counterterrorism strategy, i've never been very high in those sorts of things. gender, political necessity. there is a wretch as best to carry your posterior. if something goes wrong at least to be set via the strategy you can point to a document. you are much stronger position than not being able to point to such a document. counterterrorism, there are only certain tools that are available to every administration. they're certain challenges that face every administration to the extent that one administration seems to be more reactive than proactive. that's the reality of the business. i don't see beyond what we've already discussed about the very commendable change of emphasis

that the obama administration outside with regard to the messages that embodied the cairo speech and wasilla has talked about that. i don't see any new departures or changes that i should urge. >> thank you all. us now turn to the audience. we have 15 minutes to take your questions. because of the brief time we have, i'm really not going to tolerate speechifying trading loblaw and appear as panelists, but we want to hear your questions for the panel today. so let's start with that. right there in the back corner, the woman in them a gentle -- i'm not good with colors. yes, you. [inaudible] >> the opt-in service of the voice of america. i just wanted to see if we could just widen this discussion out of it. you talked about the franchising of al qaeda, self radicalized and individuals. what is the threat as he looked back over the year, how do you evaluate the counterterrorism policy of the administration as

it applies to afghanistan? >> well, clearly it's a major emphasis. with regard to not just going directly after suspected terrorists, with stings like dumb strikes in the counterinsurgency. my personal view is that as an overemphasis. is a political reaction to much of what this president faced. but if you want to change the emphasis, that's where it is. it has been so far. >> one down in front here. >> thank you very much for your comments, but none of your comments really touched upon the fact that virtually all of the terrorist incident that have

occurred have been done in the name of a particular religion. my question is, to what extent is there a capability -- and this i think is especially pertained to mr. pillar because you work in parliament and in the intelligence communities. an understanding of why -- why some individuals to become radicalized by islam. and if there is enough of an understanding about that and if so what do we do about it? >> i can just start with that. i mean, number one your premises is incorrect. the southern poverty law center has documented 75 right wing extremist lot that have either been foiled or accomplished since 9/11. so terrorism is a multifaceted threat to this country. as i said, there is no dirty bomb found anywhere in the world except maine. you know, a chemical was found

that could've killed 30,000 people. there's a multifaceted threat of terrorism and as jacob said, you know, since time immemorial there have been people who have used violence as a means to achieve it. if you look at a beer coal that there is, most of those i've found that it is not driven by religious fervor or ideology nearly as much as it is by personal experience, including things like alienation from the community and racism. so if we employ racist policies that alienate certain communities, that's counterproductive. so i think we have to be very careful at work on actual facts, rather than, you know, from any political agenda or erroneous

information. >> i'll just add one point is that in surveys of kind of non-terrorist, subscription to a lament and interpretation of islam that supports the notion of militarized and visual jihad is a very good predict her of kind of positive feelings toward terrorist groups. but actually taking religion seriously in terms of educating her children and studying it seriously yourself predicts much less support for al qaeda and the afghan taliban, which are groups that prefer what is mainstream doctrine. it's a complicated issue in the details of doctrine the same to be, not the fact of a particular religion. >> third row along the wall, making it difficult for you to get a microphone to. >> steve from fairfax. jim, i like your formulation about terrorism happiness goal as invoking an overreaction. so i'd like to hear your

thoughts from the panel on why it is so affect the in getting that overreaction. i can understand why cable news channels would behave as they do with the flashing gasworks and all that because it's all about the ratings. but the grown-ups who are in charge should know better. and mr. ervin, you are the one who was most supportive of the idea of a war on terror and especially liked the answer to jacob's question, what are the pros of that report? >> well, i certainly think that their benefits at instances of overreaction. during the bush years, actually. as i said, to round up of arab muslim males for months, for years was an overreaction. i think it was an overreaction. i am appalled by the notion of indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. but the fact is, as i said before, that there are

terrorists who are determined not to just kill americans by caliph in a catastrophic way with a weapon of mass distraction. and so there must be a recognition of that. and there must be an element of counterterrorism strategy that includes warlike elements, killing people. the use of the military. and i guess the final thing i'd say is that we need to redouble our efforts and i hope and expect, as i said also, that this christmas day incident will compel us to do that, too closable or abilities that continue to exist in our aviation system, and her maritime system, and our border system. the fact that we can't prevent everything a terror attack and the fact that we can overreact should not allow us to prevent ourselves from closing those vulnerabilities that can be closed and from reducing the risk to as close to zero as it is possible to do. >> and i think that's an excellent question, if you don't

mind, and gets to something that clark said earlier and i just repeated that the goal of terrorists is to create a catastrophic attack. that's not the goal. that's the methodology. the goals are political. the methodology they used is terror because they know that creates that overreaction. so, what we have to understand, we have to look at what the differences between their goals and their methods you can look at their methods and of our homeland security efforts are to counter their methods, then maybe we're missing a piece of this puzzle that we could address without war. >> could i respond to that quickly? they have a couple of goals. we have to understand the initial goal, of course, is to kill people. we can't pretend that that is not part of what they're trying to do. they are also trying to multiply the effect of the number of people killed by terrorizing everybody that they don't succeed in killing. so it's really both. it's not either or. >> i think it is the method, not the goal.

our goal isn't to have war around the world. the method we used to try to create a war and pro-american -- the >> let's touch on it briefly and then go back to the audience. >> this is another illustration of the the capitol or the collapse of thing. we talk about day or the terrorists it covers a wide range of motivation and that is a source of confusion rather than clarification. >> jacob, quickly. >> at the look of the correspondence that goes on within these groups, what they're seeking is not to kill people but the killed people that go political goals and this is often a matter of great debate within groups. >> another question? and then i will head to the back. >> hello? this is a narrowly drawn issue and it's difficult to discuss without reference to the context, so i don't dispute to find. about to say that my mindset is formed by tanner co.: and

indeed and then ask a question about salient of the islam notion and the context of competition between gods and extending western global hedge me. so i don't see how we can talk about this without talking about the wahhabi's and their support of the expansion of the taliban in that region. and they have a particular, i believe, distortion of islam that they're using for political purposes. i think that priscilla formulation taking several steps steps back from the particulars of terrorism is an important approach. so i want to hear what the panelists think about kind of a

dialectic that says that you can't do tribalism pieces. you've got the taliban thesis and is perhaps secularism, the synthesis of all this that american policy could focus on, could develop a dialogue about conversation and the american public about the men developed a tolerance on -- tolerance for our responses to terrorism, our engagement in afghanistan and all of that. because seems to me that if the context that we are operating in. >> panel? >> is a big problem. i think the president said most of what needs to be said in cairo when he referred to the walkies when we're talking about saudi's. we called them the wadis.

they have changed greatly for the better with regard to counterterrorism over the last several years and specifically since 2003 when i started -- of course -- and they are taken extremely seriously. >> let's go back up here along the rail. >> freelance correspondent. we have a formal cia here and have a formal personnel. i would like each of you to talk about how this agency c cooperate in this global terrorism. and also from your observation, what are they doing now? thank you.

>> you know, i actually believed that a lot of, you know, the agency turf stuff is overblown and a lot of ways, that if you get down to the street level even before 9/11 there actually is a lot of cooperation between the agencies and everybody feels like i'm missing teen. you know, i think the problem that occurred both in 9/11 and the christmas attack is the volume of information being collected. how the senate joint intelligence investigation of 9/11 said that the problem was that the significant pieces of information were lost in the vast streams of data collecting. well, those have become roaring rivers with the expansion of the authority to collect without suspicion. and the management of information within the agencies has not changed significantly to where they can identify this information from the mass of information.

so that's really what we should be getting out, is how we make sure that our collection efforts are properly targeted and that the information we collect is properly followed up on. and i know that it really matters whether it's an fbi agent or a cia agent or two of them sitting together in a national powers them center is the methodology. >> i agree completely with mike. people at the current level do not as their first act when they come to work in the morning look at the order charge and say, i'm not part of this agency or not under the dni said ernesto cooperate -- no, of course. the cooperation takes place regardless of what the order charge says. my only other point is that some of the better publicized instances of turf squabbles, such as the one between the director of the cia and the director of national intelligence estimate should appoint the overseas intelligent rats were a direct result of the last so-called fixed we had which was to create the office in the first place. it never would've happened if we

just stuck with the old organization. >> let's take one more question before we conclude with this panel. middlebrow -- the middle row. >> are we on? my question deals with the technology and airports and fears and economics as a result of it. i think that taking down a plane is much more than just an annoyance. it's potentially an enormous economic potential catastrophe if people don't fly. now, the christmas almost bombing showed us that at least in the airport part of it we don't have the mechanisms to detect things. i worry very much about this full body scan and as the only way of detecting things when terrorists judicious use of body

cavities in the future to me is like, how do you detect that? and what do we do along those lines when we get right to the very end that a chaotic situation is there if we can't really detect well enough people getting on planes? how do you feel about that? is that a real worry? the >> i can take that quickly. you are quite right that one of the limitations of his whole body imaging technology is the inability to spot concealed weapons in the body cavity. we know that drug dealers and drug traffickers have been using an elegy for a long time and it's only a matter of time before terrorists do. that said, and the typical american fashion there are technologists and businesses, mostly small businesses, working right now to plug that gap. and i just the other day was thinking about technology to be

a lot to do that. the larger point to do that was when dhs, in particular, the security community in general, tsa in particular particular, tends to react and focus on the last gap. we close that gap and go back to sleep until another incident happens revealing another gap and we address that gap. one of the things we need to start doing is to get ahead of the curve i trying to anticipate additional methods that could be used against us. and close in the gas before those gaps are exploited, commendably among many things the president said during the course of these pronouncements one thing that tsa, dhs are going to redouble their efforts to work with for example dob and our national labs to develop these kind of technologies. the final thing i would say and this is the point that paul made an i.t. made earlier i think is that all that said is we need to recognize their infinite number of targets, and in the number of in which those targeted could be

exploited and we could never have 100% security. but again, i close by my continuing mantra which is made in that it's not an excuse for doing what we can do. and so, the grinning to redouble our efforts to address this because obviously it's one that is going to be exploited sooner rather than later. >> in our position at the aclu that the first task has to be the ability of this to improve security against the current threats. and it is very unclear whether this hottie scanner would have identified this bomb was hidden with the materials that was used, not to mention the body cavities. so it doesn't cost the first test. if ceramic knives become the method of choice, then maybe body scanners are more appropriate methodology. but there are other technologies including trace explosive detectors that are actually in use. you may have been at the airport

and seen the guy with the wind to read the inside of your carry-on bag and stick the end of the wand into a machine to test. we can invest in that technology to doesn't have the privacy setback and can be more effective. so rather than doing a major let's throw millions of dollars that this technology, we know that terrorists can beat. it was widely publicized that amsterdam airport type the body scanner machines and had employed them in 2007. so that al qaeda chose to go through or al qaeda, these terrorists chose to go through amsterdam knowing that information is a pretty good time they were confident they could beat that machine. >> if i cannot, even though they have those machines were used in the terrorists knew that as well. it wasn't that they didn't think they were effective -- the >> as i mentioned at the outset as we break don't go far we will reset the stage.

standard stretcher legs, but we will return just in a few moments to hear from daniel benjamin. before we do that, i want to thank our panel for what i think has been a great conversation. join me in thanking everyone. [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> welcome back, everyone. please take your seats. we're ready to begin the second part of our program. can i have your attention? please take your seats. my name is christopher preble

and i'm the director of foreign policies that a dove. i'm also the cochair along with jim harper you a party met in my colleague ben friedman of cato's strategic counterterrorism initiative and ambitious three-year project a possible by the generous support of the atlantic philanthropies but additional support to the institute. i want to take an opportunity for to thank them for this project. i want to thank also in a benjamin for joining us today. when we launched our project back in 2008, we identified the top experts on counterterrorism in this country and frankly around the world and dan was right at the top of our list. he participated in a discussion that we the cato posted in chicago back in late august of 2008 here he was unable to join us back a year ago today, but he was busy with the new administration, with the incoming administration and i'm very grateful to him for joining us to take time out to join us

today. let me just introduce them to you briefly. daniel benjamin was sworn in as the coronary on may 282,009 prior to its appointed ambassador benjamin wester vector of the center on the united states europe as a senior fellow in foreign policy at the brookings institution from december 2006 to may 2009. he spent six years as a senior fellow in international security program at the center persecuted international studies here in washington. her 1994 to 1999, mr. benjamin served on the national security council staff as director for counterterrorism in the office that transnational threats 1998, 1999. and before that as a foreign-policy speechwriter and special assistant to president clinton. before entering he was a correspondent for "time" magazine and "the wall street journal." he is covert into that, dhs secretary published by random house in 2002 and the next

attack, the failure of the wear and the strategy for getting up right published by full-time stocks in 2005. he also edited america and the world in the age of terror and international relations and has written numerous articles in "new york times," "washington post," "time" magazine, and many others. he has degrees from harvard and oxford where he was a marshall scholar. please join me in welcoming daniel benjamin. [applause] thank you very much, chris for that kind introduction. it's really a pleasure to be here today, particular pressure to be back on massachusetts avenue in the think tank capital of the universe. i used to be an inhabitant of massachusetts avenue. and there have been moments when i wondered why i ever left his comfortable home. but those really were just omit. and let me just say i'm really

pleased to have an opportunity to speak with you about the threats we face in the obama administration counterterrorism policies for confronting them. and i am particularly pleased because he mentioned the project which i was involved in. i had a lot of opportunity to try some of these ideas in that form and there is a certain poetic justice to bring enough forward here now. one of the critical test of an administration counterterrorism policy is to see how they emerge from contact with a genuine terrorist event. the attempted christmas day bombing nearly cost several hundred people their lives on northwest flight 253. make no mistake we had a very close call and we are extraordinarily fortunate that no lives were lost. the event was a stark reminder that we are in a constant and rays to try out our technological advances and confront its ability to deploy

the changing cast of recruits. the president has really taken us to task for some key failures. above all in the from of intelligent analysis and watch listing. other shortcomings are obvious. we need to have online as screening techniques and technologies for a new generation of explosive devices. we are working those issues aggressively now. equally important, the events of christmas day demonstrated that some of the understandings that underlay how we organize ourselves for counterterrorism needed updating. other events in the water untracked latter half of 2000 underscored how some of our operative assumptions were no longer adequate. let me name the most outstanding of these assumptions. first, we know now that al qaeda affiliates, not just the group's core leadership in pakistan will indeed seek to carry out strikes against the u.s. homeland. we can no longer count on them to be focused exclusively on the near enemy, on the government in their own countries.

in retrospect, of course, it is abundantly clear that any group that was prepared to be part of the al qaeda network would embrace these central approach of another group. this strategy would lead the group to attempt a tax that would appeal to its target audience of potential sympathized jurors and to be either against the near enemy or against the far enemy, that is against us. as i will discuss later much of our policymaking, especially with regard to the region where the plot was hatched has been premised on the conviction that we were headed toward exactly that kind of spread of the threat. but our defensive arrangements and specifically our watch listing, for example, were not there yet to note the clear shortcoming. second, for years we've known about al qaeda's desire to recruit militants with vectors to deploy against the united states. we have not experienced in the eye-catching offers us up into the country, slips them into the country in some time, leading some to speculate that the united states has successfully

deterred such operatives from entering our borders. but as a number of recent events made clear we cannot afford to have any sense of false security. as we've seen the last few months come into high-profile land force in cases, individuals who had been trained and handled from the badlands of the federally mr. tribal areas of pakistan have been operating within our borders. a bus driver, now faces charges in federal court for allegedly planning to set up a series of bombs in the united states. an indictment unsealed in chicago december portrays an american citizen, david hedley, playing a pivotal role in 2008 attack in mumbai on the which killed more than 170 people, including six americans and dramatically raised tensions in south asia. yes, our intelligence and law enforcement tripwires worked. but that is the reason enough for complacency because of her we face is dynamic and evolving.

and let me just say that the example of david hedley shows that al qaeda is not the only group, or the only group of groups, with global ambitions that we need to worry about. it is going to take bold that would please al qaeda planners. the groups were present ported conspiracy to attack the united states embassy in bangladesh would only deepen concern that it could indeed evolve into a genuinely global terrorist threat. very few things worry me as much as as much as the strengthening ambition of lat, a truly present in south asia. we are working closely with allies of the region and elsewhere to reduce the threat from this very dangerous group. a third myth, i should say, has also been dispelled. americans are immune to to al qaeda's ideology. while domestic incidents of radicalizytion are significantly lower than in many western

nations, several high-profile cases demonstrate that we must remain vigilant. the recent arrest of five americans in pakistan suggested al qaeda is inspiring u.s. individuals to present violence. similarly, the trickle of individuals who have gone to fight in east africa demonstrates the groups reach into that region. and even if some go for nationalistic purposes, they are still become radicalized later on. the importance of these cases should not be glossed over. the western here is clear. in a long struggle such as the one. there are few greater perils and intellectual stagnation or bureaucratic stasis. our fellow at the president said the other day as a nimble adversary and we have quoted never-ending race to protect our country and stay one step ahead. because of the flatness of the organization, the high level of integration and ingenuity, we need to be on our game all the time. we need to keep in mind the

words of the 9/11 report, which in this respect got it precisely right. quote, it is therefore crucial to find ways of replacing and even bureaucratized in the exercise of the imagination. this is really the paramount and enduring challenge we face, staying sharp, invading our defensive systems, maintaining our intellectual edge. these are all essential. now having observed changes in the threat, the demonstrator to the adaptive qualities are in the spirit of want to add another is because we shouldn't ignore the signs of their weakness as well. let me point out 31st. al qaeda in the arabian peninsula took credit for the christmas day plot. now, can anyone remember the last al qaeda or an affiliate claimed credit for a bomb that failed to kill? second, their intelligence officials have noted on numerous occasions, al qaeda intifada is under more pressure than ever before. and three com al qaeda and its supporters are clearly feeling

the effect of our work with the international financial community to stop the flow of money to terrorists. now is al qaeda affiliates turned to kidnapping for ransom to raise funds, we are urging our partners around the world to adopt a no concessions policy towards hostage takers so that we can diminish this alternative funding streams in regions such as the sawtelle, the fata, and yemen. the point should not be overlooked. the financials circumstances have deteriorated. we should not score the points on one side of the ledger. that's the point of this hesitation. that was to fear mongering. it blurs the picture and undercut their efforts to get our assessments right. another challenge we face involves distinguishing what i'm drawn in the latter half of 2009, more precisely on christmas day, for what did not. in other words, we need to fix

the problems that presented themselves and not get into a panic or abandon the other parts of our strategy that worked. and what i'd like to do now is turn from the headlines of the last few weeks to the broader strategy. because most of what we are doing is fundamentally sound and will pay off for us in the long-term. let me walk you hear it. if i'd spoken to this audience a year or two ago, a few would've been that the u.s. have developed and was employed with great skill what i would call technical offensive counterterrorism capabilities, taking individual terrace off the street and disrupting cells and operations. get on the strategic side was concerned that we would losing ground in the overall -- in the overall campaign against international terrorism, in particular that we are going to try but up at his narrative. in my roughly eight months as often as a review of tactical capabilities has been more than worn out. i'm pleased to say as well but i

believe the administration is addressing that critically important strategic gap. in afghanistan, the president has put forth a clear plan to constrain the taliban and destroy the al qaeda core. and the administration and congress are putting up the resources necessary to achieve that goal. general mcchrystal's positive comments yesterday suggests we're making progress there and that we should not succumb to an easy defeatism. we are working with pakistan to work with trust and mutual interest to work with the defeat of radicalism in that country, which has in recent months been so much bloodshed. we understand the trust deficit that was built up over decades between the united states and pakistan and created the current situation. we know that these challenges will not become -- will not be overcome overnight, but we are on the right track. we are also working on those regions outside of south asia where radicalism has been

flourishing. since december 25, there has been more than a touch of collective hysteria in the press that a new safe haven collinwood terrorist has suddenly emerged in yemen. in fact, gannon was arguably the very first front. if you go all the way back to the last days of the first president bush's term in december of 1992, perhaps the reverse al qaeda attack happens there when operatives try to bomb a hotel housing u.s. troops who were en route to somalia for the u.n. mission there. long before the uss cole was attacked there a number of major conspiracies in the 1990's there were also based in ervin, many of them pointed at saudi arabia. the wife has waxed and waned in the interim, but in yemen by now it is clearly at a peak. al qaeda has always had a foothold in yemen and it has always been a concern. but i can't say definitively is that the obama administration has been focused on some points in a one.

on my first day at the state department, the same day that i was sworn in, the deputy secretary of state said to me, here are some of the priorities you need to be lucky not invited to top the list was yemen. we have worked very closely much more effectively with the yemen authorities over the last several months and were making progress. the results of that engagement has been the forceful actions were taken last month in yemen and have continued against aqa p. and these were by far the most serious actions taken in many years. i note that in today's newspaper there is another report of a senior militant been killed in yemen by government forces. our strategy is to build up the yemen capacity to do with the security threats in that country, but to also this is very important, to mitigate the acute crisis that ervin is dealing with. they are grappling with serious poverty. that complicates governance across the country that is

larger than iraq. al qaeda merely be an template takes an advantage of security in various regions of yemen and that is worsened by internal conflict and competition for government and competition for governance by tribal and nonstate actors. that's why we must address the problem of terrorism in yemen for a comprehensive and long-term respect is one that considers various factors including assisting with governance of development efforts as well as equipping the country's counterterrorism forces. this effort represents a comprehensive approach to security policy and one that we are implementing in cooperation with other countries, including saudi arabia and the united kingdom. the gulf states are very concerned and they are from press reports noting that biggie we poor example is allocated more than $500 million for support in yemen. what we are doing in yemen is what we're doing in many other countries, building by city. consistent diplomatic engagement

with counterparts and senior leaders helps build a political will for, counterterrorism object is. and when there is political will, we can adjust the nuts and bolts aspects of capacity building. we are working to make the counterterrorism training of police, prosecutors, border officials, members of the judiciary more systematic, more innovative, and more far-reaching. capacity building also includes more basic police training, terrorist finance training. it's truly representing a whole government approach. this is both good counterterrorism and good statecraft. we are addressing the state insufficiencies, terrorism thrives on and were hoping to invest our partners more impact rather than looking thousands of miles away for help or simply looking to bail together. we're also working on what my colleague deputy national security by cert john brennan caused the upstream fact are. we need to confront the political, social, and an

economic conditions that are enemies expect to win over the new recruits, the funders and those whose task supports militants to carry forward their plans. as we look at the problem of national terror and its long-term implications, we are putting at the core of our strategic policies a recognition of the phenomenon of radicalization. that is we're asking ourselves time and again, are our actions going to result in the removal of one terrorist, with a resultant creation of ten more? what can we do to attack the drivers of radicalization for that al qaeda and its affiliates finally have a shrinking pool of recruits? and vitally, are we doing to our values and the struggle? because as president obama has said from the outset, there should be no trade-off between our security and our values. indeed, in light of what we know that radicalization, it is clear that by navigating by our values is an essential part of the successful counterterrorism.

figure to recognize that working to close the prison at guantánamo bay by providing enhanced interrogation techniques in building a more systematic method of dealing with detainees. we're also demonstrated our commitment to the rule of law by trying operatives in the hymnal court system. the threat is global and our enemies latch onto grievances on behalf of the entire muslim world so we must look to resolve the long-standing problems that fueled those grievances. at the top of the list at the arab-israeli conflict and does he know president obama, secretary clinton, special envoy gorge mitchell are working very hard to resolve that. but even with their efforts, peace in the middle east will take plenty of time. and as we know it will not eliminate all of the threats. but all the big policy challenges matter, local drivers are also critical in making individuals vulnerable to the appeal of al qaeda's ideology

and its narrative. we are developing tailored approaches to falter them, to address issues of education, health care prosocial welfare, and economic opportunity to create the conditions of marginalization and alienation and perceived or real deprivation. in recognition of this, my first up is meant to build a unit within my office focusing on what we in the government called countering violent extremism. this will get local communities that are most prone to radicalization. there is a broader disdaining across the government that we have not done nearly enough to address underlying conditions for at-risk populations and we have also not been enough to approve the ability of moderates to voice their views and strengthen opposition to violence. to be sure, terrorism is a common challenge your donations across the globe. one that requires diplomacy and one that the united states could not solve alone.

the obama administration has worked hard to reach out and on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect to forge international coalitions. the administration has been working every invigorated alliances across the board and we engage in multilateral fora in concert with counterterrorism for or that in all honesty were neglected for some time and specifically at many u.n. entities, the g8 and the vast range of regional organizations that are eager to engage on counterterrorism issues. the net effect of our work has been manifold. we're increasing the pool of donors for capacity building. we are strengthening the international sense of resolve against terror and we are also strengthening global norms so that countries jointly do a better job to build security together. as december 25 made clear there is still much to figure out and there can be no assurance of a future without real setbacks. december 25th certainly

underscore the continuing pair will be faced and the determination of our foes in the evolving complexity of the overall threat but it's important to keep in mind that content free terrorism has been decades in the making and will take many more years do i make it. there is much we still need to learn, especially about how to prevent individuals from choosing the path of violence. i believe we now have the right framework for policies and ultimately i am confident this will lead to decisions and actions that will strengthen security for our nation and for the global community. thank you very much for coming to us in today and i'd be happy to take your questions. [applause] >> thank you ambassador benjamin for his remarks. we now have a little bit of time for questions. as always, please keep your remarks brief. four men in the frame of the question would be the ideal scenario and please wait for the microphone and right here my

colleague, jim harper. >> is morning we had a discussion of experts on many of them still hear anything that came up several times with the concept of an adult conversation, mostly talking about the in the domestic audiences which would not be here. your wheelhouse at the state department. what is the thinking on the administration about having an adult conversation. the consensus seems to be the coming four, admitting error, talking about failures was appropriate and calming to the public. i think also that you referred to what many people call the christmas attack as december 25th, which was adult any religious connotations from it. is that on purpose. >> the christmas attack withdraws any religious -- [inaudible] i think i called it both. and, you know, i think in the

united states more than anywhere else we understand how much christmas is both a religious and a secular holiday. so i guess i haven't been appropriately sensitive to that distinction. and i've, you know, some of you sees plenty of holiday decorations every time he goes in the building in the month of december, i guess i'm accustomed to that secularization of the holiday. but perhaps that is a discussion for a different forum on church and state. now, as for the adult conversation, you know, i hope we're having an adult conversation and certainly the president of the service on errors that were made in taking quick responsibility i think is meant to achieve that goal. goodness, we've had enough adult conversations within the government and his father haraway is about roles and responsibilities. and this has been very adult in

the way that we've taken the fun. in terms of the adult conversation and the broader public about the nature of the threats. well, i think the president has been a good job of noting how nimble our adversaries have been. i try to be as prior to some kind of adulthood or maturity and talking both about the strengths and weaknesses of our -- of our opponents. and i know that when we met in chicago the need to emphasize both was a constant team. i think that if you look at what our colleagues are doing at the department of homeland security, i do want to speak for them but they've made the word resilient really a keystone of their discourse and they think that that is an essential component of any serious discussion of the threat we face because, as i said, it's been decades in the

making. it will not be unmade overnight. i hope that those are all key elements of this. i think the president also in his last set of remarks, on the threat, you know, noted that there are significant challenges and costs to having perfect security, which i think the nation, give no, recognizes and a perfect performance every single time is going to be an enormous challenge. but at the same time, his job is to protect the country and he's demeaning the highest possible performance from his staff. but as a follow-up question to you, i would be interested in knowing what the other elements of administered conversation would be. >> the whole event will be for review on cato.org. [laughter] >> as soon as i asked a question, i wanted to take it back. so thank you.

>> and his cairo speech, president obama acknowledged the negative impact the financing laws were having on muslim charities. and it certainly, you know, you can expand that to that same negative impact on all humanitarian aid regardless of a charity to conflict those. and that would seem to be very counterproductive, not just from the benign humanitarian to those areas, but from the messaging standpoint that can be exploited by extremists, which would suggest that the u.s. is indifferent to suffering in those countries. and yes, today you said that you saw it in a terrorism financing. so, how do you tie those together and what are you doing to make sure that you address with president obama said about correcting that negative impact? >> is a very good question. and it is an issue that is

constantly being discussed within the demonstration with regard to a number of different geographic areas. i think the most important being to say is that the amount of money derived from humanitarian aid specifically, as opposed -- is, you know, only a portion of the overall part of what i call the terrorist budgets. we are looking very hard at the individual donors who are moving money, who are radical individuals, who have considerable means, who are moving money to terrorists. ..

something of a challenge to get particular organizations affirmed as ones that are

absolutely not involved in anything that's inappropriate and that is a process problem and i believe the government is working on it. >> please identify yourself. >> free-lance correspondent. ambassador benjamin, i would like first to offer my congratulations to your new job. i hope this will put your knowledge to practical use. and you mentioned that yemen is a very poor country. i would like to know do we have a long term environment for young men in the long-term? thank you. >> dewey a long-term economic plan for yemen? [inaudible] -- we are certainly working on

exactly that. yemen has a lot of very urgent threats that need to be dealt with on a day-to-day basis that has critical problems in basic budget support overwhelming levels of unemployment and continuing and worsening problems in terms of the water table being depleted and the dimunation of its energy resources which is i think number one in international commodities. we are certainly working toward having the development plan, and i would point to the meeting of the friends of yemen that's when to take place later this month in london as a basis for putting that together. i should note there's also a lot of work going on with the international financial institutions to address yemen's structural economic problems. i don't think we have published the one comprehensive plan and a lot of this needs to be worked

on in conjunction with the yemenis because this is something that is going to be imposed from without but i can tell you that there are numerous wheels turning on this issue within the u.s. government. >> charity and security network. i was gratified to hear your comments on addressing the root causes of violent extremism and making that part of the overall strategy and i'm wondering how more can be done in that area particularly making use of the contributions to society can make not only humanitarian aid but peacebuilding activities, long term development and education. >> i don't think we have time enough to enumerate them. i think i would turn the question on its head and say there's probably no success in this area that can happen

without civil society precisely because so many of the societies which we need to engage its the ngos that have the ground knowledge which is vitally important. it's the ngos that are politically palatable because there are many places where quite frankly our engagement is not direct engagement will not be constructive. this is one of the big challenges is creating those private public partnerships that are going to make the difference whether it is an education, health care provision, any number of other areas, governments and the like. so you know, you name the problem and i think you will find a lot of different ngos working on it and so much the better and we need to recut to cope better job of the government but we need to constantly improve the game in terms of taking advantage of the

resources existing within the community >> good morning. i am an australian tourist. that's the best way to describe myself. you mentioned the arab-israeli conflict with a source of inspiration fertilization and the islam world. how helpful is this assessment and how can we complete the two issues in the majority of international terrorist attacks really don't have that much to do with the arab-israeli conflict? the man example being the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the main reason given was the stationing of american troops in saudi arabia. >> i'm not sure i would agree the main reason was the stationing of the troops in saudi arabia. it was certainly what bin laden and others cited in 1998 and the famous fatwa but certainly the

arab-israeli conflict has been a centerpiece of their rhetoric and the more important point of is not what the terrorists themselves say but how much concern about the plight of the palestinians and failure to achieve peace has created an environment in which the al qaeda narrative has purchased in which there is this notion that the united states is a predatory power in a link with others to steal muslim countries and steal their 12th and destroy their religion. and as long as the arab-israeli conflict is associate on the web and everywhere else with this argument, then i think it makes a very tough for us to demonstrate our fundamental

concern about the well-being of muslim populations around the world. i have no illusion about how hard this is coming to be, and that is an important part of why we are also doing our best to look at local drivers of radicalization but i don't think there is a serious argument that such conflicts don't play into the hands of rhetorical master's of al qaeda and other radical groups. >> pat from arlington. after the christmas i noticed several articles that were calling that maybe the visa program should be taken out of the department and given to say homeland security. is there any likelihood that something like this will actually happen?

>> obviously this is an issue that has attracted some attention from people on capitol hill. i know of no ongoing discussions and the government to do that. i think that there's a strong feeling that the wide range of activities that consular affairs does of the state department is best left in the state department because it involves dealing with security issues but it also involves dealing with a wide range of other matters having to do with how we function as a country economically, or openness to business, trade and any number of other issues so i know that my boss is and looking to get up and as far as i understand there are no bosses of other agencies looking to take it over. for the time being i.t. we will stay organized as we are.

>> thank you. american university. my question is how can the united states encouraged secular opposition parties without alienating the ruling party's? the choice seems right now to be either you have to be part of the ruling party or you have to join a fundamentalist organization to have any kind of alternative. how can you balance those facts? >> why didn't we cut off the questions a moment ago? [laughter] we recognize there are governments issues in many different countries and that we are always balancing security concerns with values and my boss, secretary of state has been very emphatic singing the we are not moving back from our commitments to democratization

and good governance but he believes we can do a more effective job in terms of advancing those goals and debt financing those values in terms of by having more discreet conversations with those governments of those different countries, and i don't think that she wants to back away from the idea the we have to create more political space. that has been a constant among u.s. at ministration's for quite awhile but it is a long-term process and you have identified some serious challenges. >> last one. >> right here. >> i'm with the charity and security network and i guess there's a lot of reports recently about radicalization and the process and i wanted to get your thoughts about that but also especially with regard to the difference between radical thoughts and acts of violence.

>> thank you. well, this is another issue on which experts could speak for days and i think perhaps the most important thing to say in that context is that as i said at the end of my remarks we don't know nearly enough about the process by which people become radical and turn to violence. i think what we know is there is an extraordinary amount of variety in terms of the pathways to radicalization which furman intelligence and defensive perspective makes our jobs enormously complicated and challenging and that is one of the reasons why every time someone thinks they've come up with a profile they turn out to be wrong and it turns out to be a female suicide bomber or a

suicide bomber in his 40's or 50's or 60's and it is enormously challenging area and i spoke about some of the drivers of radicalization and the ones i think we have some opportunities to get involved in social the provision that would be a mistake to suggest we don't also face a threat from individuals who have encountered nothing in terms of direct deprivation and there are a large number of these and one case in point has to do with the december 25th, the december 25th conspiracy where the individual in question appears to have had quite a privileged life and certainly the history of revolutionary activity and radicalization in many different movements over more than a

century indicates there's a high and low phenomenon and a lot of people who have had very privileged circumstances turned to radical activity, so i'm going to leave it to institutions like kato and my former home brookings and csis to deliver more information on this, vitally important issue. we certainly have an awful lot of people working on it and our intelligence communities and it's becoming quite an industry within academia and not a minute too soon i would say. we really do need a lot more enlightened on this issue. anyway. >> thank you very much. can everyone join me please and thinking ambassador benjamin. [applause] >> thank you

more now on the negotiations over health care on capitol hill. our guest on washington journal democratic representative jan schakowsky of illinois. >> host: jan schakowsky democrat from illinois, and district we are talking primarily here about health care and woke up, congresswoman, to this story in roll call posted last night, charlie rangel had a ways and means it healthcare

talks are stalled and facing, quote, serious problems not likely to have a final bill until february. in your view well are the serious problems if there are any? >> of course we are at a historic moment right now where we do stand on the press at this of being able to offer to americans finally affordable quality health care. getting there has not been easy. there is a lot of interest involved that want to stall it as well as those that want to pass it so here we are at this moment where we have some really difficult questions about how do we pay for the bill, about affordability, are people really going to when they see the legislation when they go to those inevitable mind calculators and put in there and come and health status etc. going to find that they can afford to have health care? are we going to be able to cover millions of new people with the

health care plan? and so we are at a point right now where some of these serious serious questions are still not resolved. >> host: there was a big democratic caucus meeting on the hill last night. >> guest: i was there. of course. >> host: what was it like? >> guest: there were a lot of people who feel particularly the house bill that we passed is preferable to the senate bill and in many features i think that was when you heard from the members at large that were unhappy with various provisions. there is a lot of people who talked about as a way to pay for taxing benefits of workers wasn't viewed as a good way to go. this is a plan that is in the senate bill. the white house is certainly supporting a version of that,

and we are trying to come to a place where middle class people don't find themselves, once they take a look at this bill and find out wait a minute, now i'm going to have additional taxes on my benefits and there's some dispute about what is a cadillac benedict that really what it means is a high-cost benefit. let me give you an example of that. i know you will want to go to your viewers and listeners, but the house and senate are all a part of the federal employees health benefit plan. a large group average age 47, and the cost of our plan would fall below that threshold of the so-called cadillac plan. if the senate of the united states average age 63, smaller group with some health issues,

if they were getting their own plan by themselves that very same benefit package would suddenly be a cadillac plan because a would cost more so really when you talk about a cadillac plan you have to talk about is it the benefits that are cadillac or is it because the age, the health status, even the gender more women and a group more money. we are discriminated against and have been in health care costs. >> host: phone numbers on the bottom of the screen for the guest. she will be with us until the top of the hour,, russell mengin schakowsky, a democrat from illinois, support line for democrats, republicans and independents and we read in the hill this morning pelosi, whole year and the chairman will represent the house on health care reform. they talk specifically about 11 lawmakers meeting privately with president obama at the white house today. the house has five negotiators and house majority whip clyburn

will attend as senators reid, bachus, donner, berman and harkin and it's likely the five will represent the other chamber on the health reform compromise and one other headline before we go to calls, support grows for u.s. of exchange. it's a wall street journal story. they read the white house wants to include a national health insurance exchange in the health bill which would give house democrats on of the top remaining demands. would you care to speak more to that? >> i sure would. the house bill creates a whole national pool so there are lots of people that are going to be able to jews, people who are uninsured right now, self-employed, small businesses that can go into this national exchange that will have national guidelines and they will be able to choose from a variety of private plans within the exchange and the house bill we also have a public option that you can choose from.

but we believe that by creating these national rules and national pool a will be much more successful than the senate idea of having stayed by state-by-state. these could end up being very small with not a lot of negotiating power to bring down costs and to provide the benefits people need. >> host: first call from the guest, louisianan, jane on the democrats' line. hi there. >> caller: good morning. can i ask my question now? >> host: yes, you're on the air with the congressman. >> caller: the gave the united healthcare another increase. the retiring ceo of united healthcare last year was to receive a package of $1.2 billion for his retirement than they cut it down to 800 million because of a discrepancy and paperwork so how do you justify that and is in that the real cost of hospital care and medical care because

the high insurance rate? i will stick my answer of the year. >> guest: the idea some of these insurance executives are making these huge bonuses, that they are getting these golden parachutes when they retire, that a lot of the health care dollar goes to pay these costs is something we are going to get under control. what we are going to say is that a certain percentage of the premium dollar must go to health care now. the house bill says 85%. the senate bill i believe it is 80% but they are not going to be able to just dip into your pocket and take all that money into profits which has been a problem for so many years and these high salaries and bonuses. and so we are going to actually require the insurance companies to open up their books to provide more disclosure so that we can do better oversight and

control over the way these health care dollars that come from hard-working people are actually distributed. >> host: jacksonville florida. sally on the republican line you are on the air. >> caller: good morning. i have a question. i have excellent health care. i don't want to lose the health care i have, and i don't want to pay for anybody else's health care either so how am i as a taxpayer not going to be penalized so that money comes out of my pocket to pass your foolish bill? >> guest: actually of course i disagree with the foolish bill, but i -- if you have excellent health care, and i assume that's probably true door impleader; am i right about that? was the way she is gone to read >> host: >> guest: then you will

continue to have your health care and the way the bill was organized you won't be paying additional cost for anyone else. but i want to say this, every other industrialized country in the world has made the decision just as we have for putting out fires, for fire departments or public education that will be a right of all the people in their countries to have access to health care, and they've decided that it is a community, a country function something we are in together. the united states stands alone in saying we don't share together making sure all americans have health care. i think it really is a moral issue and we all want to be involved in making sure that we have access to quality and

affordable health care. >> host: back to that meeting of the specifics aside for a second was the general mood of the caucus has it now returns to town and tries to reach finality on the bill? >> guest: the mood of the caucus was at the end of the day house members want to see a bill that more resembles the house bill. we think that it provides much greater of relief for people. we think that we have handled the issue of control over the insurance industry much better. we think that just one after another of the provisions the closing of the doughnut hole, that's how much the people on medicare have to pay out of pocket for their medication. we want to close that gap so people don't have to pay that much. we do it in the house of representatives, and so that was i think a lot of the conversation. so it isn't super yet.

>> host: recovered a town hall meeting with stupak in michigan he talked about his amendment on abortion. it's part of the house legislation. did that come up last night and what is the fate of that do you think? >> guest: eight date. the pro-choice caucus which i'm part of, which has well over 100 members in the house of representatives and wide support throughout the country reproductive health care being part of any package. it came up last night in the context of those of us who are pro-choice believe that we ought to stick with the status quo that says and i want to say very clearly not any federal dollar to pay for abortion. we don't necessarily like that but we agree with that. that is the hyde amendment. and the stupak amendment and the

nelson amendment and the samet go well beyond that. we think as women that all of our reproductive health needs to be covered. that was discussed even by a pro-life democrat that he agreed let's keep -- let's not make this an abortion bill. let's keep this a health care bill. keep the status quo no federal dollars going for abortions and move on and not make an issue of how we are going to expand or actually take away rights that women have now. >> host: we have ron on the line now for independence in ohio. go ahead. >> caller: yes, my concern is the amount of taxes that is going to be put on me. i run a small business, of employees and what they are going to force me to do is going

to put me out of business and one of the democrats said the republican health care was to die quickly. i would rather die quickly and died free than to live a long time under the yoke of oppression and tyranny. >> host: what do you and your employer is due for health care right now? >> caller: we don't have any and are not going to get any. >> guest: okey -- there's plenty of health care available out there. the only thing this is doing is turning this nation into a bunch of bums and beggars. where is our american pride? >> host: let's hear from the congress woman. discover it's good news for you if you look at this bill. there will be an opportunity for your in police if you are a small business to go into health care exchange where they can get to the health care they need. this will be an opportunity for

you to say to your employees there will be a way for you to get health care and it is not going to be charged to you if you are a very small business. additionally right away there are going to be small business tax credits that will make employee coverage more affordable. there will be tax credits of up to 50% of premiums that will be available to the firm's that choose to offer coverage, the choose to offer coverage. so actually this bill has been very careful to particularly target small businesses most of whom want to provide their input ease with health care coverage. i don't know if that is your situation. with the kind of assistance the you will be able to do it. either yourself with tax credits or by having a health care exchange that your employees can go to. >> our guest, six term elected

back in 1998 sits on the health subcommittee on energy and commerce. we are talking health care jan schakowsky the representative. perry is bill indianan, steve, you are on the democrats' line now. >> caller: in my book i would love to pay more taxes to give good health care because i think we should have a single payer system instead of paying these lousy insurance companies to make their big ceos of these profits. i would rather be paying a little bit more taxes and i think i would probably get a whole lot better health care than what i've got right now. >> host: anything you want to respond to? >> guest: i do. a single payer system is a very efficient system. what single-payer means is the government would be the insurance company but people

would still be able to pick their doctor lacked, you know, go to the hospital, the same kind of distribution system we have for health care but every single person would be covered the way that it could be covered is by a special tax for health care. but as you correctly said it is for most people it would actually be less-expensive and yet everyone would be covered. remember the united states of america per person spends nearly twice as much as every other nation in the world and yet we have almost 40 million people that do not get health care but then there's millions and millions more i hear them every single day that are underinsured. they think they are insured until they get sick. >> host: cal from tennessee. republican. what would you like to as a? >> caller: good morning. think you for taking my call.

please don't cut me off until i get finished. number one, i want to ask you about this national insurance exchange. can somebody like myself established his own exchange? >> host: let me stop you there and we will go back but first let's get an answer. >> guest: insurance companies would qualify to come into the exchange, and so it would be a place where there would be an established benefit package. there would be some people who are subsidized within the exchange in order to pay that premium. they would have to abide by certain rules in order to be in the exchange but it would be for private companies. as i have said in the house bill there would also be one publicly run option but all the rest would be private insurance

companies that meet the criteria in order to come into the plan. >> host: keep going. >> caller: okay. the second point i want to make is i have an e-mail a month or two ago from the major insurance companies. the point is people keep beating the backs of the commission that 99 cents out of every 1 dollar that insurance company gets goes for doctors, hospitals medical supplies and so forth. and it the second week i want to make real quick here is government is good in some areas but this isn't the time. over 6 million people by the way are involved with health insurance. if you want to break them and put them on unemployment. thank you. >> guest: first of all, the insurance companies actually but still exist under both the house and senate plans and we would be adding so many people now to the ranks of the injured that we

know the health care industry itself would absolutely boom in fact one of the challenges that we have is making sure we have enough health care providers to meet the demand in both bills, the house bill and the senate bill make investments and work-force development to make sure we have all the primary doctors that we need, to have the nurse is that we need and the whole range of health care professionals converses, assistance the we are going to need in order to take care of the people that are now going to have access so there will be a lot of jobs in available. >> host: averitt tensions are growing. several lawmakers have frustrations with senator lieberman and concessions to the concessions over the things they cut in the senate version treated did that, plus light and what is your view on what's report about the deals?

>> guest: well, you know, one of the things that senator nelson got was 100% government reimbursement for health care for nebraska, just for nebraska. and i think even within the state there are people who think we'd a minute, that, you know, because you've got that 60 of those now you're going to make special deals the only apply to nebraskan is. this isn't good. so there is enormous frustration. the fact one the united states senator can hold not only the whole congress poll country in a way i think it does raise questions about the rules. we know that we have got 50, in the high 50s of senators who are ready to compromise, to work on a bill with house members and we've probably got about 55 u.s.

senators would support a public auction for example, which the public supports, and yet we've got one senator, and senator lieberman, too, who by the way just days before he said he would then support letting people buy into medicare actually did support that swedes see some change of i think probably due to the insurance industry. >> host: we are going to cover an event at the press club today with attorneys general of south carolina. the topic will be constitutionally of the bill. some have talked about these, quote collis special deals. others talked about mandates on people to buy insurance. what you make of the constitutional arguments on health care? >> guest: i'm not a lawyer but again certainly every other industrialized nation has figured out constitutionally how to provide health care to all of our citizens and all of their citizens. i think we could certainly as the richest of all and pretty

smart nation figure it out. >> host: syracuse new york for representative schakowsky. >> caller: i have a couple of questions if i could ask. i'm a little nervous. i'm sorry. was to take your time. >> caller: i hope i get my point across. it sounds like a waste, fraud, and abuse is going to pay for half of this health care bill. they make it sound like the only time they are going to go after it is after the health bill is passed. i don't understand it. and secondly, i would like to know what is going to happen when we hit the next big wall when people are his living healthier and longer what's going to happen with our social security? >> guest: let me talk a little bit about, you mentioned waste, fraud, and abuse. one of the ways that we want to get this under control is to hold the insurance industry accountable. and one of the most important

ways to do that is right now insurance industry is exempt from antitrust laws. by law right now they can actually collude with each other. get together, set prices, said territories without any interference at all. only major league baseball and the insurance industry is exempt from antitrust laws. one of the things i know the white house wants to do and certainly it is in the house bill is to remove that exemption so that they actually have to compete. >> we should point out our guest also sits on the intelligence committee. >> guest: id. >> host: now you are back in town there's going to be a lot of activity on this attempted attack on christmas day, the plane coming into detroit. what is the right approach intelligence lies and security was? >> guest: as the president

said, we had the intelligence. it was about connecting the dots. we are going to have a full briefing this morning from the intelligence committee about exactly what happened. and what we need to look for is where are those holes. we created the director of national intelligence in order to make sure that we coordinate and not stovepiping the communications so the cia talks to homeland security, talks to the military so that we pulled together. we know i think the one that sticks with me is when the father of this young pakistani terrorist was turned in by his own father, when he came -- house on how that didn't get translated into let's not let this guy on the plane with no baggage and a one-way ticket and a visa he could use over and

over again how did we miss that? but i think there's a number of other places where it fell through the cracks. we are going to find out and try to close together so that doesn't happen again. >> host: what is the biggest challenge in pulling that intelligence together to make the right decisions? >> guest: well we want to hear that it's not just a good idea for people to talk to each other but that there is some accountability here that employees from the top to bottom must transmit certain pieces of information, and we also do want to look at the internal structure that is somehow preventing that. is there a problem even with hardware? google if you put in a wrong spelling will say did you -- do you mean? how, if this guy's name was put in with one letter wrong as we have heard then it just disappeared? remember these are all

transliteration from another language. so of course there is going to be deferred spellings that occurred. we cannot let that make us on safe on airplanes or anywhere else. >> host: woodstock connecticut, steve, line for democrats. hello there. >> caller: representative, have a question about cadillac's tax on the bedle class. it depends what media source. it's been to be 40% on say another union member and something like 40% is enough to put us over pretty much every working family. >> guest: i think that the argument that somehow if the plans are taxed at such a high rate that instead of doing these generous health care plans that the employers will turn that money into salary is just a

mistake especially in this economy. i am agreeing with you i think it is a real problem to say that we are going to tax these benefits particularly if you are in a group of older workers or more female workers wear the same rather modest benefit package becomes very expensive because of who you are or you are in a certain industry that's more dangerous. so actually, i think that the notion of taxing these benefits is not a good idea. we are working very hard right now to reshape the proposal so that it doesn't hit middle class workers whether there are parts of unions or not. >> host: one last call, pete florida david republican. good morning. >> caller: hello. i missed, who is our guest today? >> guest: and congressman jim schakowsky from the chicago area. >> caller: treated. i am a brain and spine surgery doctor and a member of the board of the florida medical is this edition include this issue for

many years. you know, and it just strikes me that you are making so many apologies and pushing forward so many desperate on the one hand he said the insurance companies are bad and the need to be controlled and then you support a mandate that forces everyone to buy overpriced of insurance, double taxing and they will even be subject to jail time if they don't buy. and then you cut and about price-fixing because of the ferguson act of 1945 in the antitrust exemption, and yet you allow medicare price fixing. on the one hand you can plan the system is broken into costs too much and yet medicare is bankrupt. and of course there's still time. let's not forget the jail time. congresswoman, i would like you to answer do you think the people that elected you are just this stupid? why are you placing politics about people's lives? >> guest: well, the american medical association actually

supports the legislation, so you're not representing the view of organized medicine here who does as you may know in the house bill we do make an important fix in terms of doctors, the income under medicare. in fact in the house bill because we increase the number of people and the senate bill, too increases the number of people and medicaid we understand that we need to raise the rate doctors are paid and so it is not about politics. this is about -- and i would agree with you i think that we need to do more to regulate the insurance industry and make sure we don't have -- and our bill does that exclusions for pre-existing conditions. imagine when people get sick then they can't get their health care. this is why the medical

association is supporting the legislation so that you can be a healer and make sure all people who need the health care will be able to get it. >> host: our guest is the representative jan schakowsky, a democrat from illini district, that's the north side of chicago also evanston. >> guest: yes. >> host: thank you for your time. >> guest: thank you. also with us on washington journal was republican representative pete hoekstra of michigan, the ranking member of the intelligence committee. >> host: we talk now with representative pete, congressman you will be getting a briefing today by the administration on the christmas day bombing attempt. what do you want to know? >> guest: there's a couple of things i want to know. number one this is kind of personal for me i come from steve michigan and this was an attack on the largest city of

detroit, so we have any indication at all that detroit was picked for a specific reason and this is an indication that it may be a target sometime again in the future or was detroit just a choice of convenience? it could have been atlantic or minneapolis, could have been new york or any other city. the guy was just getting to detroit. and the second thing is i really want to find out why after fort hood which had very much the same footprint the american-born radical clerk in yemen, it had al qaeda of the arabian peninsula and it was an attack on america. what steps did the administration take immediately after fort hood and in the intervening time between fort hood and the christmas day attack? did we put enough emphasis on going to the arabian peninsula on a lockheed that who knows what to the fat in this debate to happen if we focused. the refusal to recognize fort hood as a terrorist attack meant

there were certain things we didn't do in the intervening window. >> host: the president said regarding detroit the had the intelligence and failed to, quote, connect the dots. he did say it is unacceptable. they are working on it. what do you make of the response? guest quite glad the president recognizes number one was a terrorist attack. the second thing he recognizes that there are continued weakness is in the intelligence community and they collect a lot of data and will now need to do is develop a system -- i worked on the 9/11 reform. i don't think information sharing is the key issue anymore. now the information as we have all of this data coming to the different organizations and we need a system that pushes information about this is we are listening and getting to the chatter out of yemen that's talking about nigeria. we are getting this fall for coming to the embassy in nigeria

saying my son is moving over to the radicalized site and starts connecting some of this and pushing it out and saying this is information data that comes together. we now need a live person to analyze this stuff. >> host: phone numbers for the guest on the bottom of the screen again support plans for democrats and republicans and independent. we are talking about u.s. policies on terrorism. our guest is representative pete hoekstra from michigan whose ranking member on the intelligence committee in the house. in addition to that briefing, you and randy members of several committee sent a letter to the white house and touch and a little bit so far but speak more about letter you sent and what were the major points? >> guest: the frustrations we have is we had no briefings on fort hood. the president commissioned a report to be done on november 30th. the report was delivered to the white house. congress still hasn't seen it.

again i fought for what was a terrorist attack and what really caught my interest again was radical islamic cleric whose american-born. what is his influence? this is when al qaeda gets someone who is an american as part of their operational or inspirational network that is a true for them so what was going on and what did we learn and what did we know about him and what did we do as a result and they continue to refuse to brief us on that. i was in yemen on new year's day and expressly the white house called the ambassador and the cia called the station chief. this never happened to me before and said the congressman may ask particular questions about a range of issues the committee does have jurisdiction over but if he goes into that area you got to tell him that that

information will be forthcoming to him from washington. excuse me? you can't talk about stuff that you're doing here and the answer you've got to give me is sorry, congressman, the back to washington and get that answer and it's kind of liked i already know they won't give me the information that there's a high level of frustration here. >> host: before we get calls to mention yemen. what did you learn their? >> guest: we learned a lot of things. it's always good -- you get a fire hose for 12 hours from the people in the country telling you everything they want you to know what yemen. the ambassador and station chief. he's a problem, the american-born cleric. gitmo detainee is a return to the arabian peninsula are a problem. they form the kind core of al qaeda, the arabian peninsula. these folks than have a special interest in attacking the united states because they are so tight to the united states so the franchise on the every in

peninsula, the al qaeda franchise is different than the senior leadership in pakistan and afghanistan of al qaeda and what the goals and objectives are. afghanistan and pakistan, senior leadership is focused on the battle in afghanistan and disruption in pakistan. outside on the arabian peninsula, sure they are interested in what is going on in yemen and arabian peninsula but they have as a special focus they want to attack the united states and they are willing to do smaller attacks. they will take satisfaction out of the attack on fort hood. 14 americans killed. they will take satisfaction if that plan would have gone down in detroit we would have lost roughly 300 people on the plan we don't know how many people might have died on the ground but it wouldn't have been on the scale of 9/11. we always thought senior lesion that al qaeda wanted to do something as big if not bigger than 9/11 as the next statement. al qaeda and the arabian cct host: first call for the

best ranking member on the intelligence committee in the house can the new jersey, lewis, republican you are on with pete hoekstra. >> caller: good morning, guys. when we catch somebody and they are here on a visa and they are planning to attack how come they are not charged with spying or espionage? another question if they are a citizen and we catch them planning to do an attack how come they are not charged with treason? one final footnote with this administration i feel that the [inaudible] thanks. >> guest: thank you. i would like to say there's easy questions and easy answers. in this area there are no easy answers to some of the questions that you faxed all the points you raised are points that i would typically agree with. we asked the president as a result of the fort hood and as a result of the christmas day attack to kind of move exactly in the direction that you are

talking about. number one is we need to recognize people coming into the united states and troubling to the united states from overseas this is a privilege, not a right so if we get information that people may pose a threat to the united states we put them on a no-fly less or selector list and if they want to come here they've got to go more in-depth interviews. the second thing if they come here and commit a crime absolutely the terrorism act. charge them to the full extent but put them through a military tribunal. take them out of the civilian court. they do not deserve the rights and privileges that the civilian court system provides. the third thing, and this is i think an important point that you make as for americans to become traders, the spokesperson for bin laden who's an american, the d.c. five who left the u.s. sometime i think in november and

went over to pakistan to practice jihad, these individuals need to be treated as the traders that they are and we have to accelerate and removed the barriers to dealing with these individuals and in the fourth point the recommendation made to the president is we have gitmo detainee is from yemen and saudi arabia the president sent six of them back to yemen late december, stop, leave them in guantanamo, don't send them back to the country's with major on the average daily as they don't want them back they go back and form and join, to many of them are joining al qaeda again. >> host: to the land for democrats now and in wilmington delaware for the congressman. hello there. >> caller: it seems like we are talking about swatting flies. now we have a lot of enemies. what is the real root cause of

this war against islam? this crusade bush announced we have to go back to light the new american center document was produced for israel by all of these american thinkers and they ask for a new pearl harbor and then the next thing we are having a 9/11 just after cheney assumed control of the airspace and crossing the rubicon is a good book. here we have israel, a country with hundreds a satellite system the black male to so you can read about and we have to assume israeli enemies even though they do terrorist actions against their neighbors and basically are having a holocaust against

the palestinian people why are the people reacting to that our enemies? >> host: con wissman? >> guest: added that you are exactly right you need to look with the root cause of this article jihadist movement against the united states are and you outlined a couple in one form sure our support of the state of israel is a cause that motivates these individuals. they are not big fans of democracy. they don't believe in a quality of women's rights. they don't believe in freedom of religion. at their core the despise our way of life and values that we espouse and so there's a fundamental difference between radical jihadists and their view of the world and the view of the united states. i think yes you are in absolutely right. we need to understand the root causes and recognize that it's

not going to be easy to address these problems and why it is so difficult, it gives you in understanding why it is so difficult to say we are going to negotiate with these folks. i'm sorry i'm not sure there's a negotiating path is a reconciliation between the jihadists movement and values we have here in the united states. >> host: on the hill itself, congressman of course health care coming economy, jobs, but this story of terrorism especially detroit and intelligence matters we are expecting a lot of activity. can you get a sense of the scope of hearings that are coming? >> guest: like today the intel committee we will get a briefing on the christmas day attack, the full house and then we will get a briefing from the president's national security adviser again on the christmas day attack. i suspect this will then be followed up by a number of

hearings, homeland security, again there will be more hearings on the intelligence site and i'm sure there will be hearings on the armed services site as to exactly what is our level of defaults meant going to be in yemen, with a summer level of involvement going to continue to be in pakistan and afghanistan. but those are not the only on a different areas. somalia people say that is surprising the sky from nigeria but i've been to nigeria a few times and there is a fault line in nigeria. the northern part of nigeria is islamic. the southern part is more christian and read along the fault line there's been a lot of violence and this is where this individual apparently came from. so, you know, there is going to be a lot of looking at the specific incident but what we need to do is recognize and continue to take a look at the bigger threat. it's almost a global threat. you've got the hot spots but then you've got the activity that's taking place in europe and obviously in the united